Answer me this Batman: If the ’surge’ is working, as ‘those who know the facts on the ground’ say, then why can’t we leave?

There isn’t an original thought in John McCain’s head.

He only regurgitates what his corporate “backers” tell him to.

Jeez. What a loser.

After really, seriously, attempting to find one, single reason I would be okay with voting for this guy, I couldn’t. The ONLY plausible reason for voting for McCain is if the only other choice was……….Bush!

Coach: The reason we can’t leave is because the oil’s not fully online yet. Then, when it’s online, we can’t leave because we need to oversee it’s continual flow. Great reasons to occupy a country huh? Especially considering how easy it would be to switch our transportation industry over to something other than petroleum.

Good Luck McGoo supporters. Do you even have any idea who he is? It changes day to day. Now, he’s the Flip-Flop Express.

ISRAEL’S SUSTAINABLE PARASITISM ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Israel and the American Diaspora notoriously donate thousands of dollars to elect corruptible American presidential and congressional officials, who then repay Israel a thousand fold from precious tax revenues; with millions of dollars worth of technologically advanced military equipment and services, and with the priceless lives of thousands of young patriots.

Any governmental official, either elected or appointed to office, who accepts campaign donations from a foreign power is categorically guilty of treason; and justly deserves the death penalty, if the repayment for the political donation causes the loss of American lives.

(Merkwurdigliebe)

–to all those blind Obama supporters out there: the 800 pound gorilla in the room that no one seems to want to acknowledge is that whomever the next candidate is, we’re going to be in Iraq for a LONG while…those bases are already built, or in the process of being built

And, we make the situation worse by pulling out…we precipitously pull out, we leave a power vacuum, and the whole deck of cards in the ME collapses, threatening our assests in the region, and most importantly our oil supply…thats the reality of the situation that either candidate is goin
to hae to deal with

the idea of a withdrawal is nothing but a myth, coming from either side

What about the 20/20 vision Obama supporters?

Jed Clampett

Geez Gliebe, why werent you professing the absurdity of going in in the first place. Wouldn’t the removal of Saddam cause a power vacuum that people like sadr would exploit under the auspices of Iran? The intelligence community understood it clearly in ‘91 and Bush senior understood quite well what would happen. The penguin himself stated as much. As McCain just said with his comment about the soldiers coming home not being important, it didn’t make much difference to these guys to send them in in the first place under false auspices.

So now we have a situation we created and probably even funded by distributing a billion dollars of Iraqi cash without proper accounting or understanding of the individuals whom they were giving millions of dollars to. Our presence there gives the enemy the proper excuse to not only attack us, but to perpetuate violence against each other. Yet under your once rosi scenario now turned worst case, the iraqi’s have no capacity for reconciliation or recognition that 7 years of wanton murder and power grabbing by evil men is enough and should be stopped.
One event that would go a long way to making that possible is a systematic reduction of troop levels as an incentive for the Iraqi leadership to stop using their wealth and power to worsen the situation. And to make the iraqi people that they are empowered and to remove the bad actors now while we are there.
We created the situation, but it has been Iraqi’s that perpetuted it and created it their conflict with their power struggles. It is no longer our fight, we gave the iraqi people the chance to allow us to protect them and get them from under the oppressors, they chose to be paralized by fear. If Sen. O understand their religion, he will know how to use it to justify our exit and place the blame where it belongs… the power hungry in their own gov. We, in the meantime, should take care of our part of the problem by prosecuting our misleaders.

the neo-con machine requires that we keep a presence in the middle east at all costs, which better positions us for what is seen as an inevitable resource war. neo-cons believe there is only one way to maintain this so-called energy security. it disregards domestic ingenuity as a means to overcome oil dependence, as evidenced by the phenomenally high cost that the machine is willing to pay to maintain the aforementioned presence, while simultaneously ‘offering’ only a half-witted domestic energy policy. the self perpetuating machine is ‘fueled’ by war profiting corporations who are in a position to VASTLY INFLUENCE public opinion, political outcomes and thus national policy. the armed services are the enforcers of the global policy, to be used as tools of the corporations. the public, wether willing or not, is to be used as the means to fund this gigantic machine. this machine in-itself will be cherished by half the population. the other half is to be convinced through hiding the true machine behind an ambiguous ideal (democracy) or a fear paradigm (war on terror).

the machine has weaknesses:

**hunt for alternative resources
**heavily promote domestic ingenuity
**exposing the folly of the ambiguous ideal
**seeing through the fear paradigm
**seeking out favorable political outcomes

(Merkwurdigliebe)

Jed– the stars must be in alignment, because for once you and I seem to be in total agreement

I have never been a proponent for the Iraq invasion, and sided with General Shinseki’s overall assessment of the venture, which at the time, like everyone else’s, was based on WMD evidence that never materialized (infer much?); all I have ever argued for is a sensible strategy of what to do to get us out, or at least stabilize the situation if that is not possible…to me, whether or not we should have gone to Iraq is an argument that has long lost relevancy (i.e., as a Realist, politically speaking, I agree with you that Saddam was contained and posed no threat, and that the invasion in hindsight was a bad idea), and does little to solve the current situation. So what if we shouldnt have gone in; we’re there now, and all i’ve ever done try to work pragmatically and strategically within the medium and info available

however, the surge seems to have worked, and more and more Iraqi troops are being comissioned everyday(today the new Iraqi airforce just became operation for the first time since the Gulf War)…and Iraq is safer than it has been for some time. Whether this lasts or not will take time, but we seem to have niched out a status quo between the Saudis and the Iranians that is roughly equal to what we had with Saddam, adn the US STRATFOR assesment has ranked Al Qaeda’s presence in the region greatly reduced to ’soft’ targets (i.e., non-US interests)

Where do we stand? Its unsure as of now, but Maliki is making progress among governmental factions and his neighbors, and the sectarian violence is beginning to die down…and if Obama is smart he’ll be quick to capitalize on it, but he wont…and neither will McCain

ISRAEL DEARLY LOVES AMERICA AND DREADS OBAMA
Israel and the Diaspora dearly love America, like the parasitic blood sucking leech loves a barefoot boy. Obama, by refusing to commit himself to treason on behalf of Israel, wonderfully reveals himself to be an American patriot, and a mortal threat to Israel’s parasitic relationship with its America host.

First of all, every soldier in Iraq volunteered to be there. The Democrats and greenies have made it nearly impossible to produce and refine oil here. We are addicted to the stuff and I don’t foresee that changing anytime soon. Military experts say we are on the brink of winning this war, why pull out now? You can’t have it both ways, either we rape our resources or depend on the Middle East… in order to do so we must be there.

name one tangible benefit you have received from this war?

it’s been about 5 years now, going really good huh? do you think that money could have been spent a little wiser perhaps?

5 years and billions upon billions of dollars could have yielded actual results in terms of energy research, infrastructure and alternatives. we were RUSHED into this war because they knew that once we were there, it would be difficult to change course back again. they relied on saps saying ‘well, it doesn’t matter now. we may as well make the best of it.’ it’s hard to climb your way out of a deep hole you’ve dug yourself into, but not impossible. today’s mistakes (iraq) are tomorrow’s lessons learned (iran). we need a savy president to make the best of this, not a carbon copy to keep us in it.

our brave soldiers are here to protect us, not to run corporate errands – so don’t say ‘they asked for this.’

we will defeat the middle east by eventually turning our backs on them, not by occupying them.

OH Ralphie: ‘not going to change anytime soon.’ That’s because your fellow republicans keep blocking legislation that could get us away from oil. See, here it is: Republicans’ answer to oil addiction is to add more oil (ours). Democrats’ answer is to find another answer for energy.

But, I guess Ralph’s way of curing addiction is to add more of the addicting stuff………

Define ‘winning’ Ralph. How long will you give the Iraqis to solve their own internal problems? If ethnic cleansing has rooted out most of the violence, which is BS, then it seems it’s a political problem. How long do you give them? Oh, wait, you’re under the delusion that it’s okay for America to stay there as long as we want.

Would you feel the same way if an enemy occupier stayed here? Are there german bases here? Japanese bases here? Chinese bases here? Russian bases here? If there were, how would you like it??

Same old recycled arguments……..

ISRAEL’S SUSTAINABLE PARASITISM ON THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

Israel and the American Diaspora notoriously donate thousands of dollars to elect corruptible American presidential and congressional officials, who then repay Israel a thousand fold from precious tax revenues; with millions of dollars worth of technologically advanced military equipment and services, and with the priceless lives of thousands of young patriots. In the case of the un-Constitutional Iraq War, Podhoretz Neo-Con Bush sacrificed over a trillion dollars and the lives of 4,000 young patriots, to sole benefit of Israel.

ACCEPTING FOREIGN CAMPAIGN DONATIONS IS HIGH TREASON
Any crooked governmental official, such as Podhoretz Neo-Con Bush, who accepts a political campaign donation from a foreign power is categorically guilty of treason; and justly deserves the capital punishment, if the donation illegally causes the loss of American lives.

There are three sides to every story. My side, your side and the truth. If we are all so freaking smart, then why are our elected officials so wrong? One side says this, one side says that, people get upset and accuse the other side of all kinds of horrible things. Bush isn’t a bad man and Hillary isn’t evil. People must not have enough problems of thier own. Instead of throwing ridiculous accustaions why not look for the best qualities in a cantidate? If it doesn’t go your way at least you tried. As far as life being a bowl of cherries, forget it! Life is a bitch then you die. Don’t make it out to be any worse than it is. In other words, shut up.

Jed Clampett

Someone tell me again why it is acceptable for only 15% of the energy in gasoline being used instead of at least 80%? wouldn’t we only need a fraction of todays consumption if some company allowed their vehicles to make use of 80% of the energy in gasoline instead of 10? I would say that making better use of the gasoline we now have would go a long way to reducing our dependance on oil and would remove the excuse for senseless war. Besides, we didn’t go steal that oil for america, we stole it for the oil companies. They get all the benefits, we get the shaft and a polluted environment. Thanks big OIL. Hope you get what you deserve, God Money.